1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to distributed data management and, more particularly, to a persistent index storage system and method allowing storage and manipulation of data using hierarchical nested records and code points.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional distributed processor systems facilitate execution of several different processes simultaneously on different processors. Systems and methods for exchanging data among these processors exist in the prior art (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,003 to Hammer et al. for Distributed Data Management Mechanism). Such systems and methods present techniques for reducing storage requirements by splitting a logical data stream into segments residing at different processor storage locations. Descriptor elements indicate the location and length of the various segments so that they can be reassembled into the complete logical data string.
Hammer et al. and related techniques suffer from several disadvantages. One disadvantage is that hierarchical data structures are not generally supported; if the data stream contains nested records, there is no built-in technique for navigating through the data structure. Thus, individual applications are required to deal with the hierarchical structure, as they cannot rely on the data management system to do so. This adds to programming overhead. Another disadvantage is that logical data strings have a fixed maximum length due to the fixed and limited space available for the descriptor element specifying length. Finally, existing systems generally provide only a mechanism for communicating and passing data strings among processors, but do not provide a persistent storage system.